23 January

The battle for status is the organising principle behind all human life, at all ages. Status is also identity. Without status, you’re nobody. Also why the fundamental act of a human being is to copy, or imitate. We imitate those with the status we admire and want. We do it in groups or teams, aligned behind the high-status individuals. We copy other team members (peer pressure) to create our membership of the group. Teams then battle each other, for supremacy. Imitative rivalry. Look around. You can’t unsee it. It’s everywhere, it’s all human life. What car you drive, what band you love, what clothes you wear, who you vote for. It’s all team sports, status games. It all feels exactly like an NRL or Premier League competition, because it is literally that, that’s our universal social model. It’s the organising principle of this and all other social media platforms too, on steroids. Even the most basic share of ‘what I’m doing’ is a status game.